Good News Headlines 6/5/2023
Cleveland Lake Erie lighthouse – Erik Drost via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0
U.S. Is Giving Away Lighthouses For Free To Preserve Them As Historic Landmarks
by Andy Corbley, Good News Network
A unique opportunity for a fixer-upper is coming by way of the US General Services Administration (GSA)—6 historic American lighthouses. Going up this year via public auction, the federal government has a unique way of ensuring lighthouses retain their historic status which can even involve auctioning them off to private citizens with an affection for the now-obsolete structures. Lighthouses are beautiful, attractive pieces of seaside scenery, although perhaps it’s a tad difficult to explain exactly why it’s almost impossible to find someone not moved by the sight of one.
The Volunteer Search And Rescue Ships Saving Migrants From The Sea
by Oliver Balch, Positive News
The rubber dingy is full. Spilling-over full. Taking-on-water full. Wind picking up. Waves crashing over. Adults, children, infants, all huddled together, crying, terrified. Hardly anyone can swim. The engine splutters, dies. Dark skies. Shore out of sight. Nothing but sea. The water is rising. This is it. This is where the journey ends. Then, a light. A faint beam. Growing closer, brighter. Next, a burst of activity. Florescent life jackets, shouted instructions, rescue ladders, helping hands, thick blankets, warm food, hot drinks. Refuge, safety, a glimmer of hope. It’s a scene played over time and again.
In Sweden, Recycled Fabrics Turn Old Clothes Into New Fashion
by Dominique Soguel, The Christian Science Monitor
Discarded, sorted clothes arrive by ship on the shores of Sundsvall, in the Gulf of Bothnia inlet of the Baltic Sea. But they aren’t bound for a landfill. Rather, they are destined for the city’s Renewcell plant, where they will be dissolved and processed into a new substance: Circulose. This material looks like white cardboard, feels like watercolor paper, and – most importantly – can be spun into yarns for textile manufacturers. Renewcell’s patented technology and successful launch of the world’s first industrial-scale textile recycling plant in Sweden offer a beacon of hope to brands and consumers who care about environmental sustainability.
California’s Medicaid Experiment Spends Money To Save Money — And Help The Homeless
by Angela Hart, KFF Health News
Sporting a bright smile and the polished Super Bowl ring he won as a star NFL player in the late 1980s, Craig McEwen doesn’t fit the archetype of someone teetering on the brink of homelessness. McEwen is hopeful that a health care initiative in California offering new, specialized social services will help him get back on his feet. He is one of nearly 145,000 low-income Californians enrolled in CalAIM, to transform its Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal, into a kind of safety net that provides housing and other services for people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless and have complicating conditions like mental illness or chronic disease.
Scientists Generate ‘Electricity From Thin Air.’ Humidity Could Be A Boundless Source Of Energy, They Say.
by Doyle Rice, USA Today
Sure, we all complain about the humidity on a sweltering summer day. But it turns out that same humidity could be a source of clean, pollution-free energy, a new study shows. “Air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available,” said the study, which was published recently in the journal Advanced Materials. “This is very exciting,” said Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the paper’s lead author. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”
